Gunna wrapped herself in a dressing gown that had seen better days, but since she had stolen it herself from a hotel in Copenhagen on the honeymoon with Raggi all those years ago, it had enough sentimental value to be kept. She retrieved her glasses from her jacket pocket and perched them on her nose to flip through the Sunday newspaper that had been lying on the doormat since early that morning. Although she had called Snorri to bring the morning meeting forward, she deliberately hadn’t asked what progress he and Bára had made in chasing Ósk Líndal for information.
‘Bloody shame, really,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Bloody good coppers those two. But I’d bet any money they’re both out of the force in two years.’
She reached for her mug on the table and realized that she had leafed through the paper automatically without taking a single thing in, so she sipped coffee and leaned back in the flat’s only comfortable chair to run the faces through her mind again.
‘Mum?’ Laufey inquired drowsily, padding softly into the room and dropping on to the sofa to wriggle under Gunna’s arm.
‘Hi, sweetheart. All right?’ Gunna asked tenderly, suppressing a pang of guilt at having been out for so long.
‘Yeah. I went to Sigrún’s and had dinner there and then I came home and did my homework,’ she said carefully.
‘All your homework?’
‘All of it.’
‘I’m sorry, my love, things are really busy at work at the moment.’
‘I know, Mum. You are going to catch this murderer, aren’t you?’
‘How do you know?’ Gunna asked in surprise.
‘Mum,’ Laufey explained patiently, ‘I do watch the news and I hear it when you’re on the phone. And Finnur said that when you catch him, he’ll get life. Is that right?’
‘We’ll see. I hope so,’ Gunna said as her mind flashed back to Einar Eyjólfur. ‘Come on, you’d best be off to bed again. I have an early start tomorrow, so you’ll have to sort yourself out in the morning. Did Sigrún say you could go to her for lunch again tomorrow?’
‘Hm. Yup,’ Laufey mumbled.
‘Go on, sweetheart. Off to bed. I’m going to sleep soon as well.’
Laufey dragged herself to her feet and shambled back to her room. Gunna heard the creak as she lay down and within a minute her thoughts were back to the case.
She was delighted to know that Matti Kristjáns had run for shelter and had a good idea of where he had run to. The thought of her cousin being another victim would have been hard to bear. In spite of the rancour between them, she felt genuinely fond of Matti as one of those people who had always been part of the family scenery for as long as she could remember.
Gunna glanced at her watch on the table in front of her and saw to her surprise that it was almost eleven. She lifted her feet on to the coffee table and laid her head back in the chair on the headrest, intending to close her eyes for a minute.
Three hours later the front door clicked and she snapped awake. She realized that she had fallen asleep in the chair and her legs were aching. She lifted them stiffly to the floor as the living-room door swung silently open and the shadow of a tall figure appeared in the doorway.
She felt entirely helpless, wearing only a dressing gown and her mind fogged with sleep. The figure dropped a bag on the floor and stooped slightly to avoid cracking his head on the lintel as he stepped into the room.
Gunna sighed silently with relief and delight.
‘Hi, Mum. Thought you’d be asleep.’
‘Gísli! When did you get in?’
‘Docked an hour ago. Is there anything to eat?’
31
Monday, 29 September
Gunna’s head was aching. She should have gone back to sleep, not let herself be tempted to spend an hour in the middle of the night talking with Gísli as he devoured sandwich after sandwich and a jug of coffee. She was overjoyed to see him home after a month at sea and had a good idea he would spend much of his ten days ashore in Reykjavík, only returning to the house in Hvalvík for sleep and laundry.
‘What do we know that we didn’t know yesterday?’ Gunna asked to set the ball rolling once Ívar Laxdal and Vilhjálmur Traustason had taken their seats at the back of the room.
Bára, wide awake, answered first. ‘Marteinn Georg Kristjánsson walked into Hólmavík police station last night.’
‘Excellent. I thought he might do something like that,’ Gunna said with satisfaction. ‘Where is he now?’
‘Hverfisgata. Hólmavík police drove him as far as Brú and Reykjavík sent a car to pick him up from there.’
‘Right. I’ll go and talk to Matti as soon as we’ve finished. What else?’
‘Arngrímur Örn Arnarson. Death certainly not accidental, but no indication of how or who as yet. The man was a computer whizz of some kind, ran his own company called Tenging. Snorri knows more about this kind of stuff.’ Bára looked sideways at Snorri.
‘He specialized in security, firewalls and things like that, stopping hackers and prying eyes from looking too closely into systems,’ Snorri offered. ‘I reckon he was setting up systems for people who are doing things that aren’t entirely legal and placing them overseas somewhere in countries where things aren’t looked at too closely.’
‘Porn, scams, that sort of thing?’ Bjössi asked.
‘Could be.’
‘Skandalblogger, maybe?’
‘Who knows? Maybe we’ll find out when our own über-nerds get in there.’
Gunna looked around the table. ‘Right then. Ósk Líndal. Any joy?’
Snorri grinned. ‘There’s someone who isn’t a happy bunny on a Sunday afternoon.’
‘Explain,’ Gunna instructed sharply.
‘She didn’t answer the phone, so we paid her a visit. She lives in one of those terraces at the top of Mossfellsbœr, so it was easy enough to drop in on the way back from Borgarnes,’ Bára explained.
‘And?’
‘She was as unhelpful as she could be without slamming the door in our faces.’
‘Well, I reckon we interrupted some kind of party,’ Snorri grinned.
‘She was even less pleased when we got her to go and open up the Spearpoint offices so she could look up what we wanted.’
‘She was in some kind of kimono thing and had to get changed so she could go out,’ Snorri added. ‘She’s a biiig lady. A seriously strange woman.’
‘OK, what did you get?’
‘She had all the info there that we wanted. All the dates that Hårde has been here from the middle of last year onwards,’ Bára said, handing over a computer printout. ‘As you can see, he was in Iceland when Einar Eyjólfur disappeared and also in March when Egill Grímsson was killed. And apart from a couple of breaks, he’s been here almost all summer.’
‘That figures,’ Snorri added, speaking for the first time. ‘The site manager at the Hvalvík compound confirmed that Hårde had only been there once or twice a week, but after the fire on the night after that march, he’s been around pretty much all the time.’
‘Did you make any progress on finding whoever started that fire, Bjössi?’ Gunna inquired.
‘Nah. No fingerprints. No identifiable footprints. No witnesses. Nothing to go on at all. They’ll show up sooner or later, but how much evidence there might be towards a conviction when that happens is anybody’s guess.’
‘Airlines, anyone? Any progress there?’
‘Sorry, chief. Only got one pair,’ Snorri said sadly, with both of his large hands on the table in front of him.
‘Not to worry. That’s next, please, ladies and gentlemen. Anything from the nerds in Reykjavík?’
‘Yes. Er, there’s a new entry on Skandalblogger’s page, posted on Saturday. Has anyone seen it?’ Bára asked.
Heads were shaken around the table.